Gods and Soldiers (13 page)

The Igbo say that the maker of the lion does not let the lion eat grass.

I watched Nnamdi go, watched until the red dust had covered his boot prints, and felt the moistness of pride on my skin, in my eyes. Pride at his smart olive uniform with the image of the sun rising halfway on the sleeve. It was the same symbol, half of a yellow sun, that was tacked onto the garish cotton tie Papa now wore to his new job at the War Research Directorate every day. Papa ignored all his other ties, the silk ones, the symbol-free ones. And Mama, elegant Mama with the manicured nails, sold some of her London-bought dresses and organized a women's group at St. Paul's that sewed for the soldiers. I joined the group; we sewed singlets and sang Igbo songs. Afterwards, Mama and I walked home (we didn't drive to save petrol) and when Papa came home in the evenings, during those slow months, we would sit in the verandah and eat fresh anara with groundnut paste and listen to Radio Biafra, the kerosene lamp casting amber shadows all around. Radio Biafra brought stories of victories, of Nigerian corpses lining the roads. And from the War Research Directorate, Papa brought stories of our people's genius: we made brake fluid from coconut oil, we created car engines from scrap metal, we refined crude oil in cooking pots, we had perfected a homegrown mine. The blockade would not deter us. Often, we ended those evenings by telling each other, “We have a just cause,” as though we did not already know. Necessary Affirmation, Obi called it.

It was on one of those evenings that a friend dropped by to say that Nnamdi's battalion had conquered Benin, that Nnamdi was fine. We toasted Nnamdi with palm wine. “To our Future Son-in-Law,” Papa said, raising his mug towards me. Papa let Obi drink as much as he wanted. Papa was a Cognac man himself, but he couldn't find Rémy Martin even on the black market, because of the blockade. After a few mugs, Papa said, with his upper lip coated in white foam, that he preferred palm wine now, at least he didn't have to drink it in snifters. And we all laughed too loudly.

The Igbo say—the walking ground squirrel sometimes breaks into a trot, in case the need to run arises.

Enugu fell on the kind of day in the middle of the harmattan when the wind blew hard, carrying dust and bits of paper and dried leaves, covering hair and clothes with a fine brown film. Mama and I were cooking pepper soup—I cut up the tripe while Mama ground the peppers—when we heard the guns. At first I thought it was thunder, the rumbling thunder that preceded harmattan storms. It couldn't be the Federal guns because Radio Biafra said the Federals were far away, being driven back. But Papa dashed into the kitchen moments later, his cotton tie skewed. “Get in the car now!” he said. “Now! Our directorate is evacuating.”

We didn't know what to take. Mama took her manicure kit, her small radio, clothes, the pot of half-cooked pepper soup wrapped in a dishtowel. I snatched a packet of crackers. Obi grabbed the books on the dining table. As we drove away in Papa's Peugeot, Mama said we would be back soon anyway, our troops would recover Enugu. So it didn't matter that all her lovely china was left behind, our radiogram, her new wig imported from Paris in the case that was such an unusual lavender color. “My leather-bound books,” Obi added. I was grateful that nobody brought up the Biafran soldiers we saw dashing past, on the retreat. I didn't want to imagine Nnamdi like that, running like a chicken drenched by heavy rain.

Papa stopped the car often to wipe the dust off the windscreen, and he drove at a crawl, because of the crowds. Women with babies tied to their backs, pulling at toddlers, carrying pots on their heads. Men pulling goats and bicycles, carrying wood boxes and yams. Children, so many children. The dust swirled all around, like a see-through brown blanket. An exodus clothed in dusty hope. It took a while before it struck me that, like these people, we were now refugees.

The Igbo say that the place from where one wakes up is his home.

Papa's old friend, Akubueze, was a man with a sad smile whose greeting was “God Bless Biafra.” He had lost all his children in the massacres. As he showed us the smoke-blackened kitchen and pit latrine and room with the stained walls, I wanted to cry. Not because of the room we would rent from Akubueze, but because of Akubueze. Because of the apology in his eyes. I placed our raffia sleeping mats at the corners of the room, next to our bags and food. But the radio stayed at the center of the room and we walked around it every day, listened to it, cleaned it. We sang along when the soldiers' Marching Songs were broadcast.
We are Biafrans, fighting for survival, in the name of Jesus, we shall conquer, hip hop, one two.
Sometimes the people in the yard joined us, our new neighbors. Singing meant that we did not have to wonder aloud about our house with the marble staircase and airy verandahs. Singing meant we did not have to acknowledge aloud that Enugu remained fallen and that the War Directorate was no longer paying salaries and what Papa got now was an
allowance.
Papa gave every note, even the white slip with his name and ID number printed in smudgy ink, to Mama. I would look at the money and think how much prettier than Nigerian pounds Biafran pounds were, the elegant writing, the bolder faces. But they could buy so little at the market, those Biafran pounds.

The market was a cluster of dusty, sparse tables. There were more flies than food, the flies buzzing thickly over the graying pieces of meat, the black-spotted bananas. The flies looked healthier, fresher, than the meat and fruits. I looked over everything, I insisted, as if it was the peacetime market and I still had the leisure that came with choice. In the end, I bought cassava, always, because it was the most filling and economical. Sickly tubers, the ones with grisly pink skin. We had never eaten those before. I told Mama, half-teasing, that they could be poisonous. And Mama laughed and said, “People are eating the peels now, honey. It used to be goat food.”

The months crawled past and I noted them when my periods came, scant, more mud-colored than red now. I worried about Nnamdi, that he would not find us, that something would happen to him and nobody would know where to find me. I followed the news on Radio Biafra carefully, although Radio Nigeria intercepted so often now. Deliberate jamming, Obi said it was called. Radio Biafra described the thousands of Federal bodies floating on the Niger. Radio Nigeria listed the thousands of dead and defecting Biafran soldiers. I listened to both with equal attention, and afterwards, I created my own truths and inhabited them, believed them.

The Igbo say that unless a snake shows its venom, little children will use it for tying firewood.